A RESPONSE TO THOMAS KELLY (Religion)

by dhw, Monday, June 04, 2012, 22:33 (4554 days ago) @ Thomas Kelly

Thomas insists on my giving "suitable" answers to his questions, because "then we may see the truth of things". He asks why I hear loud alarm bells when he talks of "the truth of things".-Epistemology has taught us that we can never be sure that what we think we know is the absolute truth. Some people, however, are convinced that they do know the truth, and it is usually impossible to reason with them.-I wrote that your questions were sometimes difficult to follow, but I did my best.-THOMAS: You've not understood what I put and I'm not convinced you have enough knowledge of language. "If wrongdoers did not receive the knowledge and wisdom as they grew from being babies and in childhood have been ignorant in their living and you were in that situation, judging by the command in Matthew 7:17 from above, what do you desire for you, that ignorant person?" The part started with the word "if" and was the start of reasoning of an unreal situation to discuss. The word "If" shows the doubt in comparing the unknown pasts. So in the question was a desire to cause a comparison of what may be a wrongdoers past and reason of it being yours and not saying it was.-The second part of your explanation is as difficult to follow as your question, but since you doubt my knowledge of language, let me try to help you with your syntax. In conditional sentences, when the "if" clause is in the simple past (did not receive/ were in that situation), the main clause needs to be in the conditional (what would you desire?) not the simple present (do you desire?). By switching to the simple present, you have changed from unreal to real ... syntactically impossible ... and so your question appears to change from an unreal hypothesis to a direct and real question. I therefore had to guess whether you were or were not identifying me as an ignorant wrongdoer. I might also point out that if you have a prepositional phrase with a personal pronoun referring to the same person as the subject, you must use the reflexive pronoun (unless the preposition is one of position), and so your main clause should have read: "what would you desire for yourself?". I cannot even begin to analyse "and reason of it being yours and not saying it was". My answer to your question, however, is that if I were (subjunctive) an ignorant wrongdoer, I would desire happiness for myself. This question has nothing to do with the subject of "love your enemy", which we had been discussing but which we should now drop. I suggest we also drop this new hypothesis, as I suspect it will lead in the same direction as the "enemy" one ... namely, nowhere.-You have now asked a series of new questions, but I will keep my response as brief as possible. I have no doubt that some people may find happiness in what they believe to be the knowledge and wisdom of God. Others may find it in love, or wealth, or art, or worldly success. If, however, your object is to give us any knowledge or wisdom you may have, there is no point in bombarding us with limitless numbers of quotations from other people. Anyone could fill this website at a single sitting by reproducing paragraphs from the Bible, from Dawkins' The God Delusion, from Aesop's Fables or from Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra, and preface the quotes with "true or false". You have, however, kindly allowed us to choose if we want to answer. Your sermons will therefore remain on the forum, and we shall see if anyone chooses to answer. But please don't post any more until we see if there is a response.-In the meantime, there is no need for you to go back over my earlier posts, as David Turell has asked you a couple of extremely pertinent questions, which should be fruitful if you are prepared to do him the honour of answering them. I too am particularly interested in what you believe and why you believe it.